This November two candidates representing disparate factions of the Democratic occasion are combating for management over California Meeting District 20, which stretches from Hayward within the west to the more-Conservative Dublin within the east.
Elizabeth Ortega-Toro, who serves as the chief secretary-treasurer of the Alameda Labor Council, is backed by most of the state’s largest labor rights organizations, like United Auto Employees, and has the endorsement of the state’s Democratic occasion.
Dublin Metropolis Councilmember and Navy veteran Shawn Kumagai is backed by massive companies like DaVita healthcare and pro-trade organizations just like the California Chamber of Commerce.
The seat is being vacated by meeting member Invoice Quirk, who introduced his plan to retire final December after representing the district in Sacramento for 10 years.
For now, the race seems to be Ortega’s to lose.
Ortega took the lead within the district’s major, garnering 32.2% of the vote. Kumagai, got here in second, with 23.9% of the vote.
The candidates diverge on a few of the thorniest points, which pervade California politics, from housing coverage to psychological sickness therapy.
One challenge the 2 candidates are break up on — CARE Court docket. Gov. Gavin Newsom final month signed the regulation on one among his signature applications that allows courts to pressure folks experiencing a psychological well being disaster into obligatory therapy.
Ortega, who immigrated to the U.S. from Mexico on the age of three, says she opposed CARE Court docket as a result of she fears it can levy disproportionate penalties on probably the most weak Californians.
“We're penalizing psychological well being and homelessness, which is what I’m afraid of once I hear ‘courtroom,’” she mentioned.
Kumagai, who's homosexual and whose father immigrated to the U.S. from Japan, says he was an early supporter of the CARE courtroom initiative. He says that it needs to be one among an assortment of instruments within the state’s arsenal to fight a homelessness disaster, which is just worsening.
Kumagai additionally says he favors streamlining laws that govern new housing initiatives via tweaks to the environmental assessment course of required below the California Environmental High quality Act (CEQA). He says that environmental affect reviews, which presently should be preformed for each new housing challenge, ought to as a substitute be performed for complete geographic areas, like cities or counties.
“Defending the local weather, defending the surroundings, and defending housing will not be mutually unique issues,” Kumagai mentioned.
Ortega vociferously disagrees.
“I’m not keen to fast-rack housing on the backs of communities who typically bear the brunt of the environmental affect,” she mentioned.
Voters have till Nov. 8, Election Day, to return their ballots.